Textbooks Too Pro-Islam, Anti-Christian, Texas State Education Board Rules

Sept. 24, 2010— -- The textbooks in the hands of Texas students unfairly glorify Islam and are biased against Christianity, Texas state education leaders ruled today.

The conservative-leaning Texas State Board of Education voted to denounce the state's social studies textbooks in a move that had been condemned by faith leaders, and activists have condemned the board's proposal as intolerant and anti-Muslim.

The vote was close at 7 to 6, The Associated Press reported.

"It's clearly just an attempt to propagandize the state's student population against the faith of Islam," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington D.C.-based Council on Islamic-American Relations, earlier this week. "Somehow they were getting too rosy a picture of Islam."

The resolution was proposed by a one-time board candidate who failed to get elected earlier this year. It charges that "pro-Islamic/anti-Christian bias has tainted some past Texas social studies textbooks."

It also refers to the board of education as the "principal democratic check and balance" against "otherwise often-unresponsive editors and unaccountable authors."

But the Texas Freedom Network, a state religion and education watchdog group, said this measure is just another attempt by the hard-right majority to infuse its own religion and politics into the education of millions of school children.

Gail Lowe, the governor-appointed president of the board of education, dismissed the criticism that the proposal, which she supports, is anti-Muslim.

"The resolution is not attacking that religious group," she said. "There are some entities that like to stir up controversy even when there isn't any."

Lowe said she hasn't studied the textbooks or the passages called into question by the resolution, which would bear her signature should it pass, but that she intends to before Friday.

The critics, she said, are "unnecessarily worrying."

"It has nothing to do with anyone's personal religious beliefs," she said.